From the end back to the beginning

If you are reading this as your first post, you are actually most likely reading my last one for this blog!

This blog will be active for at least 6 months from this date but will then close as an exercise comprising of my learing journal for Digital Video at the University of Newcastle. The following is for anyone just staring out as a few study tips and hints and for the rest of you I invite you to follow my ramblings on www.rocketdogbulldozer.com
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I have been thinking about how I am going to approach my third trimester into the Masters degree in Digital Media.

This might be of help to those of you who are brand new and just starting out in the Digi Cert or Masters course and have just started out, but I must say that they are my opinions only and do not reflect that of the University!

Before you start on the course.

• Be prepared
• Have a really comfortable place to study setup ready to go and plan not to have a social life for the next 13 weeks. The social media aspect of this learning experience balances that out, dont worry its only 13 weeks.
  
• Setup folders in really accessible places on your machine whatever it be, Mac or PC
• These folders should be use a consistent naming convention so you can easily cross reference past units
• setup a consistent naming convention for all subjects whether or not you set them up now or as you start each one, just be consistent
  
• Mine go something like this:
• CMNS6410
  
• Learning Journal
• Major Practical Project
• Research, Modules & Lectures
• Written Reports
• this will pay dividends in the long run trust me
• READ as much as you possibly can but don't despair if you cant cover everything, make rationale decisions about what is appropriate learning for you and be prepared to just move on if it is information overload
• setup your templates for your learning journal NOW, and duplicate it for each unit. A simple Word doc with consistant header and footer with relevant details make it easy to complete this task
• write in your journal all the crazy thoughts you have along the way, be verbose, be loose and conversational, it helps form thoughts and provides your lecturerer with an excellent idea of how your progessing. It is also an excellent cathartic way to dump stuff and reflect upon on the way. I have scored 2 HDs now with this method and found it really helpful
• RESEARCH endlessly and document it upfront. This is hard if you arent academic and used to it, but a good tool for harvard referencing is online here: you enter the details and it provides a Harvard Reference you can cut and paste. I use this constantly in a template setup like my journal but called Bibliography and just record EVERYTHING I read with relevant references in case I can use it in an essay or report in the future
• Dont be afraid to drop stuff and go in a differenct direction. I have changed my mind so many times during study that it is pretty funny. Instead of getting bogged down in an project or concept brief and staring at a blank page, branch left of centre and start again, it can produce excellent learnings and great success.
  
• Breathe
• Join the discussion forums as much as possible and dont be afraid to use StudentMail to reach out to anyone studying with you and your lecturer, its really important to get feedback in as close to realtime as possible when you are working in isolation, the forums and email provide so much relief just when it all seems hopeless that you shouldnt underestimate it at anytime of the day or night you will never know when someone else is on line!
• This one is absurd maybe but I keep a pencil and notepad by my bed. I will never ceasr to be amazed by when inspiration for that all illusive major practical will hit you. Most likely at 4am when you wake in a cold sweat...
• Make sure you backup your files! OMG I lost a 12,000 word learning journal in my first trimester and if it wasnt for a portable hard drive setup as a time machine on my Macbook I would have most certainly jumped in a warm bath with some razorblades. Backup at least every month, if you dont have an external drive, burn CDs or DVDs regularly

So that is my approach at least and a few ground rules I laying down for myself, sorry if it is a bit verbose!

If anyone is totally new to this way of study I invite you to have a look at my Blogger learning journal from last trimester at http://uondigivid.blogspot.com/2009/01/gettings-started.html?zx=1739d3dc7915abb4 which I have lifted all restrictions on (it was a Uni only blog last trimester) for inspiration and my crazy ramblings during Digital Video.

Good night, and good luck...

Dan

Export settings, AE, Premiere, QuickTime Pro, BlackBoard and DVD settings

I am sharing my export settings as I know it gets quite tricky and I have had to resubmit to the BlackBoard twice.

So here are the settings for I used for compressing files and uploading across the multitude of different media types.

Premiere
Premiere CS 4 and CS3 may seem vastly different when it comes to exporting but mainly just on execution of the render, once you get past that the settings are still very similar. The big difference between the two is that in CS4 the Media Encoder opens as a separate App and in CS3 it appears to be a dialog box opening inside the main program rather than a separate App.

The settings I use are the same across the two so here goes.

Format: Quicktime
Range: Entire Sequence
Preset: Pal Source to Download 1024kbps
Export Video & Audio
768x576 25 fps Progressive ( I have an NTSC handycam unfortunately and this setting sorta matters about this for broadcast TV etc but not so much with Web distribution)
Audio: AAC 44Khz Stereo
Video Codec H.264
Quality: 50
Frame width: 768
Frame height: 576
Frame rate 25
Field order: none (progressive)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels

The rest can be left standard as I feel it does a fairly good job with presets for Bit Rate, but if you are trying to compress more for web distro at this point then you need to choose
a lower delivery preset than the one above.

Process is very similar in CS4 but when you select File, Export to Media in CS4 the Media Encoder opens up as a full size separate App.

This is the slowest of the two to Export and will take a while so sit back. The other trick I learnt is not to Export to DVD from Premiere. It must double the time frame if its a second. So I Export to Media and end up with a pretty large .mov file (my 2 min doco was 932MB) that you cant really use for web delivery but you can burn to disc. I hope this was acceptable from a Uni perspective but isnt as pretty as building a full fledge DVD with a nice menu etc but as that wasnt in the brief I took the fast option!

From here, if you want to compress for BlackBoard then import to QuickTime Pro and see below.

After Effects
In AE once your file is added to the Render queue, I go straight to Output To in the bottom right of the queue and select QuickTime movie. If you have got your compositions set right from the get go of each project you dont need to play with these settings to much. I do make sure that I know exactly where the files are being saved which I set in the Preferences section of AE at the beginning as well.

From AE I pretty much always recompress with QuickTime Pro. It sharpens things up and produces a nice compact file.


QuickTime Pro
As a video publisher this is one of the best tools I have purchased to date. No matter what you receive ie wmv, .mov, swf, mp4, mpv etc etc you can almost always open it in QT Pro and re-export it into something small and compacted at a high output that you can use. It is really worth the $79 to upgrade from the free version you get with iTunes.

My tips for this are simple. Always chose File, Export and not Export for Web.

This brings up the Save Export As dialog box and the important setting here is the Export drop down box in the bottom left corner. Select MPEG - 4 and then click on the Option button.

This is where I specify 640 x 480 or whatever size needed and just check that audio is being included if necessary and pretty much leave the other settings stock. They are very flexible if you do need them just don't forget how to find them again!

My 932MB file compressed through QuickTime ended up being only 22MB and quite reasonable quality mp4 file which uploaded quite quickly to BlackBoard and Cathie was able to quickly confirm that she could receive and view.

I hope some of this make sense and perhaps helps out.

Final project uploads

I think I need to review all of the notes and triple check I havent forgotten something!

The weekend was NUTS.

Trying to cram it all in with such little time was just ridiculous and I blame myself and poor time management for the less than fantastic results I had hoped for! But I am always being told that I am being too critical of my work and self so I will just have to live with the outcome for now. I know it isnt terrible but I had hoped to do so much more, especially with colour correction and effecting some of the lower quality handheld footage shot at live gigs.

After Effects is simply amazing, I definitely wont be stopping playing with that anytime soon, the possibilities are endless. Seeya FLASH! Nice to know ya, but I have a new friend!!

Anyway, I will prolly post more stuff tonight after I review my notes and see if anything is missing, but for now if you are looking, here is my YouTube page with a stack of different flavours of bumpers, interstitials and of course my doco for MA3 which has just been the best learning experience.
http://www.youtube.com/danblack72

Final Project Analysis and submission

I have done it. While I was working away frantically towards the end goal I didnt realise just how much content I had created.
I have burnt my final copies to a DVD and have the address to send it in tomorrow. Phew!
What a gigantic ball of fun has this been!?
In my creative zone I have created a Bumper for my original concept ARG, Humanoid:















A bumper for my Doco 'A Day in the Life of the Blow Waves'














An interpretation of an Interstitial:














And messed around with the idea of a Tag... but not sure that I got this right.















I have had heaps of fun and a few tense moments trying to work this all through and overall think that all I need is practise practise practise!

Analysis of project update

I have been thinking about my aim to set out and create a version of the participatory documentary and I having been giving it plenty of thought over the course of the morning about how successful or not that has been.

What I haven't yet decided on is whether the narrative I intend to overlay, which really is the synopsis read in a newsreader style by me, adds or detracts from the participatory documentary aim. Plus no matter how hard I try to use a news reader voice it just sounds ridiculous.

One thing that I have really struggled with in this course is the definitions of the genres and sub sets of these genres. It was a very difficult essay for me and I dont think I did it very well.

Even in documentary there are so many academically documented styles and modes as per Lecture 11 I think it was. Putting these frames and fences around something that in the past I wasn't aware of as a simple punter of film watching has changed the way that I look at films forever. I now feel more insightful and armed with understanding about so many more aspects of films now that I am no longer just passively observing or only following a plot and storyline, I now immerse myself in the directors chair and think about what it might be like to be involved from that angle trying to get actors to work with my vision. I look at film and camera techniques used. I can even name some of them! I look at special fx and CGI completely differently and this course has amplified what I learned last trimester in digital animation.

I watched an old fiction classic last night intently, called The Butterfly Effect and was amazed at just how much more I got out of the movie with my new eyes and ears. The film itself is quite powerful graphically and has quite well chosen moderate special fx to convey the plot and emphasise a point which the audience must be involved with to understand. Although many topics were brought in for added viewer interest and shock value the film is largely about a psychology student with an interesting and colourful past who has memory blackouts and his journey to understand the things that have seemingly been lost and his struggle to control those blackouts.

Back to my documentary though, and I think I have got a few parts of different types of documentary style. For instance I believe I am acknowledging the camera and my involvement in shooting the interview section where the band members are talking about completing their profiles. I think I come from a position of argument but maybe I am being persuasive in the positive light I am taking to the bands success. That for me is inevitable because I do want them to be successful but I have tried to shy away from being overtly positive and let the footage tell the story. I believe I have truly stepped away from a position of authority or expertise! My handycam work is shaky when I want it to be dead still and still as a rock when I want the 'Blair Witch' effect.

Something I am doing until now subconsciously is the use of severe fast montage editing. It featured in my own MA1 assignment of me, and I have again gone and chopped up the photo shoot scenes. I think it is just a personal preference or style that I am leaning towards personally, but I disagree with Eisentsteins view in my shots because I don't think I am creating any sort of intellectual contexts just yet!

I have just re read the lecture in a short interlude from this post and discovered that a part of the definition of The Participatory Mode (No 4, Pge 14 lecture week 10) that there are no voice of god commentaries, no unmediated observations etc... so if I write a creative narrative that tells us about the band and about what you are seeing, have I steered off course and off genre? If so, does it matter? And what does it become?

I tell ya, this genre stuff confuses the claptrap out of me! Ayeh Carumbah!

The Blow Waves bumper

This is way fun, I could sit here and crank a thousand different options out playing with layers and multiple special effects on top of one another.

This one was a good twisty unexpected outcome by combining just three basic layers, solids and a text layer, importing the graphic and then applying a background fx (the curtain) then on top of that laying down some fractal noise and jigging with it a bit before adding a lens flare and some glow and the outcome is quite cool!


I've also loaded a new version to my YouTube page with some extra footage and changed titles sequence. I have found the whole experience a bit rushed due to my indecision but on the whole filming the band and then very quickly editing a rough cut and then interviewing band members and manager Fred to get their perspective on what the story should be has been very productive. I have felt really immersed in this project and that has made a big difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyLqQm9uGZM

One stumbling block I have had with the technology is dealing with a monitor that isnt enormous really sucks when you have huge timelines and intimate sharp cuts to do in Premiere, and the way the layers are different between Premiere and AE is weird to me. I get used to working in one and then have to change a core principal between the two is confusing. I wish I could also grasp the conccept of working in compositions and layers in AE and how to effectively work between the two with sections of footage in a project line in Premiere and a Special FX composition in AE. I cant quite work out how to match the too.

The other area that still really needs work is the sound composition. It is very hard and roughly edited needing more colour and tweaking in spoken parts and observatory interviews.

I think the bumper is looking interesting but in honesty I think I will revisit the lecture on bumpers and interstitial (which coincedentally is the hardest word in the English language to pronounce and say correctly) segments and freshen up on exactly one should look like!

Everyones projects are looking amazing, some people have really grasped the complexity of compositing layers and soundtracks with special effects while others have done great titles and bumpers, it keeps inspiring me which is great in the distance learning community.

Major project progress update

Well it has been a mad week since our visitors left, and work has been totally mental so I have been having really late and less than a lot of time to spend on this project which really needs LOADS of time to work on.

Feeling the pressure right now and just very tired mentally.

But I am pushing on, so here is a very first cut of all the footage spliced together and a very basic title slide that I threw together using presets in AE. Thats it. No narrative, no colour correction, no spiffy splicing just rough edits with the razor tool and thrown together on a timeline. I have done some rearranging a few times following my concept brief layout which has also been such a great learning this trimester. After struggling with it last year and then having to use it again I can really see the value now and think that future projects will lean heavily on their use in the early days of developing concepts to develop digital video.

So this project has a long way to go, and I have not a lot of time but I am hoping by dedicating every minute of my spare time over the next two nights and then the entire weekend I might be able to shape it up into something quite fun to watch.

For those of you following me you will know I changed concepts right in the middle and so you might be thinking how does this fit the brief? When I spoke with Cathie she did mention I could put forward my own ideas and after struggling with my ARG concept for a few weeks I suddenly had a flash of inspiration that was just such a late bloomer when if I had of thought of it earlier I could have been so much further along that I am now.

Oh well... so the main takeout from this little sneak preview is not to judge too much about what isnt there (especially the narrative as that is the key to telling the story behind the imagery) I would like to get your thoughts on what you can see so far.



It might look better quality wise on my YouTube page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvaaXyQPLck

And I have been playing with the title sequence that I will use on the front and back of the intro but again it isnt much more developed yet than what is in the video but I have been playing with composits and layers of some graphics to give it more visual appeal.

Participatory Documentary - A day in the life of a Blow Wave

Today has been all about setting up and organising my project, well my second attempt at my project that should be, now that I am doing a documentary I needed to start from scratch. But it has been a good day. The project is formed in Premiere with scratch disks setup on a a remote portable HDD as there is a lot of raw AVI files that take up heaps of space, and new BINS created and split into three parts, Movie files, graphics files, and soundtracks.

Everything is organised and named, some footage is trimmed but most is just raw imports and I have started to pour through the bits and pieces as the story forms in my head.

The graphics are imported and I have four unreleased to public singles from the new Blow Waves self titled EP as the soundtrack.

I feel good about this one, its going to come together well.

I have also done a new Concept Brief but as it is a word document I dont see how I can attach it to this blog which is a shame. I am working on a storyboard to help get my story sorted out but I have a good idea of it in my head so I am not too panicked bout that but it will help me draw the story out of the observational aspect of the footage. Tonight I am off to see the band play live and hope to get more inspiration from that, and today I actually filled in for the guitar player who was at his day job while they sound checked. I learnt the song this morning and went to the venue at 2pm and played it! What a rush! Pity I couldnt film that and include it in this doco!

I was watching funniest home video this evening and was inspired by a bumper sequence introducing the top 4 funniest home videos and I am going to try and emulate that for my title sequence and bumper.

The text was 3 dimensional and had created these 'wakes' behind them as they bounced onto the screen. I have seen it before and find it difficult to explain but am thinking I could work up an effect to emulate it in AE.

Tomorrow is a big day and hoping to come out with some rough cuts to post up. The clock is certainly ticking to be this far behind!

A weekend of revelations

Well after I busted my gut to get all the stuff together for my final project, including being really late with the development and submission of my storyboard and concept brief to Cathie (sorry!) I have done my usual and come a complete 180 degree turn and am changing my entire project.

This must sound a little ridiculous, but the pressure it puts me under is quite frankly when I do my best work, and although I think my ideas and some of the execution of them are coming together (see my past 4 or so blog entries) I had really hit a bit of a wall in getting the desired affects and composits out of AE and quite frankly I was starting to feel like it was going to be a fizzer. I really needed a good green screen trick to pull off the Machinima stuff I was imagining and the screen capture software I trialled was expiring and bringing up a hideous TRIAL VERSION watermark and most of all I was losing enthusiasm fast.

Not to ditch the idea completely, as a friend suggested, shelve it and also write up some critical analysis of where the project had fell over and then come back to it for the next thing, or it may be something that I can develop further in Software Engineering later on. That makes me feel much better about it.

So, I hear all my fans asking, what are you doing now?

Well, a bit of background first. I have been very actively involved in my best mates band from a punters perspective, and also honing my skills as Guitar Tech and Stage Manager.

His band is called The Blow Waves, and they are a very camp Aussie act that play quite a lot and are really trying to break into mainstream commercial success.

They played on the main stage last year at the Mardi Gras in Sydney and this has landed them local government support to tour the world later on this year. They will be playing at Manchester Pride Festival in London, several gigs in Berlin, Amsterdam and Greece. I think they have what it takes to be the next 'Scissor Sisters.

On the weekend I was asked to come over to rehearsal and help out in a working bee for Bios, Artwork, Tour promo's and any professional CV writing that I could offer cause this is something I have been doing for years and feel like can really help with.

As a side I asked if it would be ok to film the session so that I could maybe compile a mini doco-vlog for YouTube. As you can imagine from there it wasnt far on that I started to turn my thoughts to developing the idea as a full blown Major Assignment.

I have so much background with these guys, I know their music intimately, I have the fully blown mastered EP and full permissions to use it, I have professional photography, hours of video performance footage and the intimate knowledge to know how they would most like to be represented.

To me this is a natural progression to completing my Major Prac with enthusiasm and passion and as I said earlier the pressure it puts me under to perform just makes me more enthusiastic on the whole to do a really good bloody job!

So, I will be posting some screen grabs of my work in progress over the next few nights and getting some early rough cuts together and loading them up for comment on here and my YouTube page and I think the over all synopsis will be to 'show the inner workings of a punk-trashy pop disco band as they make the hard decisions about profile and image as they head overseas.

I will do a stunning fast paced loud but intimate 2-3 minute documentary on the band.

I will do a title sequence.

And I will do some bumper type promo's with the intent of web broadcast.

Stay tuned. As big Kev would have said, 'I'm excited!'

StoryBoard - Work in Progress updates

Finally got storyboard scanned in and submitted to Cathie for final marking of MA3, felt pretty good about it and as always helped me geerate some other ideas for my major prac.

Been watching a few films lately trying to understand how the plot works as compared to the story and find it quite a difficult to discern the two which I can only assume that the director and scriptwriter of the films I have been watching have done very good jobs, as the story and plot have become one.

I watched Monsters vs Aliens in 3D at the cinemas the other day and it was terrific and very inspirational as I think animation is more where I want to head at the end of the day and this lead me to thinking that perhaps my ARG 'Humanoid' should focus on that using AE as the puppet pins look quite powerful.

Up front I must say that my characters are a bit of a rip off from Cyanide & Happiness but only because I find them easy to draw and my drawing skills are crap! So what I plan to do at the moment as I mess around with filming Second Life and Exit Reality web pages is do some illustrations stick figure style and see if I can import them as composits into AE and mess around with Puppet Pins animating them.

What I think I am lacking a little bit of so far is being able to tell a story, maybe its the plot thats missing, am I plotless? Oh dear...

Anyway here are some images of my storyboard which hopefully explain a bit about my project thus far.

Crazy ideas!

I've been having some crazy ideas for my ARG and as I am at work I have nowhere to jot them down so I am putting them here.

Create some 2D flat zombie looking freaks in Illustrator
These zombies could be the people that have been online too long in the 'unreality' world and could be the things you need to help escape by unplugging them
Could have become so digital that they are 2d instead of 3d like my avatar

More to come...

Machinima & Compositing in After Effects

I have been getting so excited with the prospects of what is possible with After Effects this weekend has been great.

I know my last post was pretty boring, simple lightning effects with some exploding effects but this is really the first time I have built my own compositions with artistic license usually bound by the boring corporate monkey life that I am forced to live to pay the mortgage - &*%*&$?!!!

Anyway, got that off my chest, got The Kooks on in the background, a puppy dog on my lap who is watching every movement of the mouse cursor on screen quite curiously, I am sure she can read, and a successful (albeit only mostly) composite Machinima creation of my very own - my very first! Secretly quite chuffed with myself.

And on top of that I have successfully combined multiple effects, and I wont say mastered, but now I do understand each of them better by virtue of practice I am sure things will only get better. The key effect I needed was green screening (Keylight 1.2 in AE) to get rid of most of the look of second life and plunge my avatar (note UoN t-shirt I am wearing - kitsch!) into a bleak and dreary yet kinda shiny world of digitisation. I didnt want to remove everything from SL but rather I wanted to more B&W look with the ocean glow effect beneath and although I am not convinced I entirely understand how I did it, I did it. :P

I have also done some colour correcting and then composited two compositions together to create this (see movie below). I also needed to mask out the ID of my avatar which I just couldn't turn off in SecondLife. Another downfall to overcome. I also had to download some trial software to capture my Machinima action which was clunky and I am not the best at camera control in SecondLife so the footage actually is not that desirable either but in concept it is coming together. Masking out the ID title has left a nasty black hole which I am not sure how to get rid of as I had to change its layer propertie to Subtract to remove it but that has gone through the composited footage as well so it looks pretty tacky people, but I am getting there.



I just published and previewed the movie and it looked terrible! All gone to crud because of the smaller quality I exported out of QuickTime Pro so I have had another go on different compression rate setting but I cant promise you it will look much better! If I had much more time I would fix this right up and export it at a much higher frame rate and post it to my YouTube page but right now other things are calling me away from the darkness of my studio/office/room/computer...

Playing with lightning

I've always been obsessive about lightning in all its forms, so to be able to play around with special effects lightning on screen well its like a dream come true.

This probably seems a bit weak putting this quick title sequence together cause it is very basic and I need to master the advanced lightning effect parameters a lot better but I got so excited when I first saw my creation I just had to post it.

More to come.

Work in Progress - Major Assignment

Well it certainly has been an interesting course thus far!

While I tortured myself thinking 'too big' about my final assignment and harboured badly over the written essay, a really good phone catch up with Cathie on Monday night has pulled me into line.

While I havent got any screen grabs to show examples of my Major Prac just yet I have plenty of stuff in my head so here is a bit of a written run down on where I am at.

I am pitching for financial backing for the creation of an ARG. My ARG is called HUMANOID. In Humanoid the typical Web 2.0 user is gradually overcome by too much time spent online in chat rooms and social networks and turned into Avatar and becomes completely digital!

In the digital world the Avatar will roam through 3D web simulated pages (software created by Exit Reality) where all the social network sites are represented by buidldings of the pages which look really cool.

I am going to use Machinima to simulate some footage for the digital segments I need to create (it gets a little washy here but will concrete as I get film on tape) and I will simulate this using the Second Life platform and an Avatar I created last year in Second Life for the lectures that took place at the UoN island created by Roger Quinn on 3D animation & rendering. I can use this simulation for some of the 'gone digital' time.

I also intend to film either a) myself at my computer or b)a friend using a computer in the 'real world' and then hope to use After Effects and a morphing simulation where the two worldsd 'tween' together and become one.

I have been working on some drama treatments, synopsis developments and general writing of ideas to help me cement these ideas down, and this is where I started to bog down and thinking way too big for this trimester.

I am now committing to creating 3 pieces of footage to meet the specifics of the brief, although I worry about my ideas still being too large!

The 3 ideas I am developing are:

1) 3D title sequence "Humanoid - how will YOU get escape WHICH reality"
2) Bumper - something exciting and fast paced
3) Video segments - some eye catching action from real worl to digital realm

All of these ideas are still a bit loose and will tighten up over time, but Cathie in discussion over the phone agreed that this is a good approach.

Still very excited about getting 'pen to paper' with this project, just very time poor at the moment.

As soon as I have some draft ideas exported out of After Effects I will post more regular updates here and on my YouTube page.

PS - After Effects is amazing! I love morphing using the paint brush and using 3D space to change block text stuff, I wish I knew all of this when I did my first video!

DM

At night, after work, finished reading, blogging, twittering...

And still haven't got the final idea sorted in my head for the final assignment!

This is driving me quite loopy.

At the moment, I know I want to do an imaginary world.

With my vivid sense of imagination that should be easy right?

Well everything I seem to think of seems very contrite or copyright!

I need to have a lucid thought that combines some of my ideas of what I want to do in After Effects. I think I can do the whole composition in there. Although I am still unclear how to switch between separate compositions, Premiere and AE. I also wish I had better design skills and could do better animations and drawings in Illustrator.

All of this cumulatively makes me feel like I am jumping on the bandwagon too late in life and perhaps I should leave this stuff to the gen Y kids who grew up with an iPhone in their pocket! Rah!

But dam you Gen Yers, I am not through yet and I will create something AMAZING!

Module 5 week 6 – Activity 2 Case Study | Title sequences

The most striking thing about The Good The Bad and The Ugly (TGTBTU)is the use of music to emphasize the action depicted by the fairly simply graphics.
The heartbeat drums building up smashed by the gunshots to introduce the main character and highlight the producers, directors name etc. The simple use of keying over red and green gives a real feel for the blood shed in the movie and is again emphasised buy the gunshots.

Combined with what seems like hand drawn animation (given the year of production) a real sense of fear and speed has been created by the meshing of these simple techniques. It is not a pleasing, easy on the ear sound and the harmonies that are ‘sung’ are dischordal and not harmonious making it a difficult and uncomfortable listen.

The Island of Dr Moreau (TIODM) is on the other hand a lot more modern and recongised as being a pioneer in motion graphics title sequences exhibits far more incredibly trickery and modern titling capabilities. At the same time there are similarities in some of the simplicities used here as well. There is a basic theme of simple core colours to begin with and these are matted or keyed out to reveal other imagery beneath them similar to TGTBTU. Where as in the latter a fragmented feel is achieved by washing text in and out the same overall effect is achieved in TIODM with text fragmentation. They both use a similar dramatic effect with sound accompaniment to emphasize key turning points with dramatic drumbeats and key splashes of sound movement. The music to TIODM is also dischordal and awkward on the ear and is used to create a sense of discomfort and fear and uneasiness to great effect.

Off topic, but an amazing title sequence to watch for Tracking, Compositing and 3D compositing is Carnivale by a52 (available on Art of the Title also). In this sequence the user is shown 2D flat plane Tarot cards that are then turned, tilted and zoomed into in a 3D composite manner. German imagery comes to life and American newsreels float in and out of perspective tweening between the film reels and the still imagery. The whole sequence is an amazing display of motion graphics, compositing and 3D animation merging with film. What kind of genre would you say this is? I think it belongs in the surreal pocket but has elements of so much it would be heard to define.

I also found the sequence from Casino Royale most intriguing visually, especially the way that the four suits from the deck of cards are used to excellent effect. Every time a character is crunched, punched, killed and squished they explode into an alternate suit from the deck. In one particular card scene a composite takes place where you are seeing an ink drawing of the Queen from the deck, as the crosshair passes over her we see a real woman of similar ilk beneath just for a second. The theme uses these images throughout the entire composition building on the theme of the casino as roulette wheels spin in and out of focus and characters dissolve into hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds while Daniel Craig romps around shooting people. Fantastic! I think I have found my calling, a total mesh of all of my favourite things piled into one!

Essay | Marked Assignment 2 | Is that a digital video in your pocket?

The purpose of this essay is to have a critical look at the contribution that Social Media is making and the effect it is having upon traditional film genres such as News and Documentaries. Emerging trends in Social Media are creating new sub genres blurring the lines between traditional news, documentaries and fiction storytelling. Some of the key things I will be looking at in detail: Is video content changing because of the devices being used to access these new genres? How is Social Media affecting traditional genres like documentaries and broadcast news channels? What are some of the new genres emerging out of social media?

With advances in technology, consumer targeted video equipment, software, and the Internet what is required to publish a digital video is now so widely accessible by most that literally anyone can publish their own videos. Social Media is rapidly becoming the new way that much of this content is being delivered, online whenever you want to watch it. What is happening in the online environment and specifically with user generated content is the key driver forcing corporate television networks and major production companies to look at very closely. Is it a threat, or an opportunity, what are the emerging trends in content, what is the next big thing?

Messages about the ‘next big thing’ video spread virally across a range of different platforms of Social Media incredibly fast. Historically traditional cinema was an absolute treat for the family - a circus for the mind eyes and ears. For a large family the journey to the cinema was a full experience, the outing followed by a meal, treats, popcorn and a block buster movie like E.T. In 1981 Special Effects created a new level of anthropomorphic horror that was so real and totally believable in An American Werewolf in London, even an Oscars awards category had to be created specifically for the film – Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. Going to cinema was much like going to a big carnival or show - plunged into another world or reality, the huge movie posters 12ft high and lit up, the smell of piping hot popcorn and then the screen and sound system itself a visual and aural overload of the senses.

But anecdotes such as these are possibly less impactful nowadays, as the experience is now online. Anyone with Internet access can go to YouTube and see a seemingly endless amount of user-generated content with a vast spread of genres being represented and created. YouTube gives people what they want to see when they want to see it. The world is much more instant with websites like YouTube where the experience is user driven. There is a new era of entertainment at your fingertips, one you don’t have to leave your house for. Facebook connects people globally as ‘friends’ creating a virtual social network with people uniting them on a common platform where you share all the video content you like. Traditional genres such as news, documentary, horror, and commercials are are represented but have been exposed to a new genre of its own, Reality TV.

Reality TV is constantly transforming itself as shows are changed and warped into different genes. Big Brother has to be attributed to be the television series that kicked it all off into mass commercialism. Big Brother gave us the ultimate experience in people gazing, for one hour a night you could sit and watch strangers who have been forced to live together for 5 weeks and made to vote one another off of the show one by one. A type of game show, a blend of news, documentary from the perspective of the secret diary vlog, comedy and at the same time intimately watching people interact and socialise, Big Brother had created a sub genre to Reality TV - Surveillance.

Similar to vlogging where a user appears to be just being habituate, existing and exhibiting their normal daily routine, Surveillance has the added attraction that the artist know they’re being watched creating a tension and often over animated responses.

This was an interesting time for emerging genres and sub cultures, as ordinary people were suddenly becoming TV celebrities with all the fame and fortune. At a similar time another reality TV show was taking off in popularity. This time the scene is Survivor; a cast of people forced to live on a remote island with limited tools and resources and then vote each other off the island. Hosted like a game show where contestants must play games for a prize a new genre based around a documentary style but under surveillance fighting for basic human survival. Contestants would lose radical amounts of weight and change appearance dramatically right as you follow along on live broadcasts.

This merging of genres from Reality TV and this surveillance aspect of watching people YouTube creates a new type of exhibitionism, stemming from both the desire to be in it, and the desire for it to be watched. People will do anything it takes to get their video up as the Featured Video on the YouTube homepage. But just doing something crazy doesn’t necessarily mean instant success. The content still has to appeal to the mass audience for a hit result, they expect fair representation and honesty in being dealt with. Teresa Rizzo calls this ‘the cinema of attraction’ whereby we are drawn to the virtual circus and it stems from our natural curiosity and sense of wonder. Social Media is creating a new connection between traditional cinema formats and the emerging genres springing from user-generated content. Social Networking evolved from people connecting, chatting and sharing into one worth billions of dollars and one that most big corporates are willing to pay heavily for. Of particular interest in this new age of film is the delivery of all of this content which now is becoming increasingly more popular on hand held devices. Broadband delivery on a mobile device and of course like the iPhone consumers are now taking the delivery of video content with them.

Computational power increases and the storage capacity and multimedia ability of hand held devices gets more powerful it is quite reasonable to take your favourite movie, news, documentaries, animations and music with you and share them just as easily.

Another aspect of delivery that is new is the ability for producers to get two way feedback and interaction with users as is the case with current film ‘Two Fists One Heart’ (Riley 2009). The Australian producers of this film released 30 minutes of footage on the Internet for anyone to use as a ‘mashup’. A mashup is footage and audio from different films and soundtracks or music and combine them together to create something new. This is nothing new in itself but the fact that producers are releasing this footage under creative commons before the movie is released in Australian cinemas is. The producer David Elfick made available footage that was otherwise wasted – cutting room floor content - and used the web and its sharing capability for delivery. It could be judged as a clever marketing campaign prior to the movie release but this creates the opportunity for anyone to work on professionally shot footage with full artistic license. The additional incentive is that the 5 best scenes created from this footage will be added to Disney’s promotional Two Fists, One Heart site, and of course on YouTube. Other emerging genres from YouTube are PR viral campaigns and docu-vlogging. The YouTuber boxxybabee is a enigmatic young lady with a very unique persona talking about who she is, what she likes, exhibiting very eccentric behaviour and prime example of the docu-blog. She pertains to be telling the truth and is honestly representing herself as herself and becomes a smash hit, her video Foar Everywun from Boxxy has more than two and half million hits (YouTube Boxxybabee 2009). Her reach is global and makes media coverage. Whereas commercial industry can dictate ‘what you see’ via Hollywood mainstream productions and success but with YouTube and Social Media the success Boxxybabee is still decided through public opinion.

YouTube gives every user the ability to make a personal decision and be involved in or have some control in the process of making a docu-vlog successful. The sharing of these instant videos via email and viral messaging as well as word of mouth and publicity stunts in some cases spread the word. Public opinion rules. No Hollywood director, clever PR campaign or inane amount of spend on publicity has an effect. This new genre is driven purely on public opinion.

The creation of social networking sites like ‘Facebook’ has only increased this change in digital media and cinema. Where YouTube was one the place to view the user-generated content of choice, Social Media itself has enabled the genre by becoming the platform to propagate your favourite videos. Facebook recognized the success of video sharing sites like YouTube and quickly incorporated its own video sharing capability. Networks of connected people globally realized that digital video could be cross-referenced or embedded videos on their personal pages. Every other social media site from Blog to Corporate propaganda site also recognized the opportunity to raise the profile of their own messaging and YouTube cemented its place in current society as the video sharing site of preference. From my perspective digital media and cinema changed forever.

An interesting aspect of this change is that the traditional delivery of blockbuster movies has not changed. It is reasonable to believe that the average family has a massive flatscreen tv or a massive overhead projector system creating a cinema at home, yet cinema still appeals and continues to fill seats. I believe that this is the extension of the cinema of attractions and the need for human beings to react and interact with each other. This is the atmosphere of the cinema of attractions. We laugh and cry together, react simultaneously and feel better for having similar reactions to the stranger next to us. We like the cinema. The bigger screen, the amazing Dolby Surround sound systems installed in today’s theatres forming a big part of the attraction and creating that atmosphere. Social Media connects our relationships and provides the platform to share and showcase any material. A user, or friend, posts a message, a picture, a video on an online social media page, every person in their contacts list sees that something something has been posted, they click watch and experience and by doing so alerting everybody in their contacts list of their interest in what I am saying, doing, experiencing and so the viral message spreads. New content is being created users and delivered online and it is very popular, and Social Media is having a prolific effect on digital video and cinema by the merging and blending of traditional genres like news and documentaries into docu-blogs and reality television based surveillance cinema. All of this content has a new angle to consider in that it has become completely mobile and portable. It has affected what we view on free-to-air television and cinema as much as it has affected traditional advertising and print media streams, and will be a key source for the emergence of new genres into the future.

Bibliography
Brie Byncild (2007). Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional. California: Peachpit Press, Berkley. 278. Ken Dancyger (2007). The Technique of Film and Video Editing. 4th ed. New York: Focal Press. 10. Anthony A. Apodaca, Larry Gritz, Ronen Barzel (1999). Advanced RenderMan. San Francisco, CA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann. 3. John Conomos (2007). Mutant Media: Essays on Cinema, Video Art and New Media. Australia: Power Publications. 31. Teresa Rizzo. (2008). YouTube: the Cinema of New Attractions. YouTube: the Cinema of New Attractions. 5 (1), 1. Jim Stinson. (202). Video Genres. Available: http://www.videomaker.com/article/8843/. Last accessed 20 March 2009. Duncan Riley. (2099). World first: cut movie footage released for fan mixing under Creative Commons . Available: http://www.inquisitr.com/20350/world-first-cut-movie-footage-released-for-fan-mixing-under-creative-commons/. Last accessed 21 March 2009. Mark Andrejevic. (2003). Between the New and the Old Medium. In: n.d. Reality TV: the Work of Being Watched. n.d.: Rowman & Littlefield. 1-6. CMNS6040 | Digital Video | University of Newcastle Marked Assignment 2 – Written Essay

– Student number 3103360 1

The Struggle Within & Resolution

I was, note was, having a MAJOR conniption over my genre essay, due this weekend.
I had picked Superheroes as my genre and have to admit I wasnt even really sure if that was a genre. So I sent Cathie a request to clarify and she was a bit aloof and wouldnt really say yes or no but that she thought the genre would be more comic book action genre. This got me starting to think that I didnt even really know what a bloody genre was!


I spent hours, almost a whole weekend fine tuning my 200 word synopsis and managed to pin point some more finite areas to concentrate on looking at green screening and how effects in general have affected the believability of superheroes. I know... pretty fine tuned!


So hitting the research again started to become very frustrating and not turning up much good reference material. You cant rely soley on some user generated content wiki right?


And this is when it came to me: FLASH! Pow! Just like an old comic superhero - look at Social Media as a genre! I madly started jotting down points of interest, paragraphs of loose thoughts, headings and quotes, references and topics to discuss an before I knew it I had 1500 jumbled words and thoughts down on the page.
This is it I told myself, this will be an interesting essay.

I quickly wrote to Cathie again seeking permission to go off topic and change the focus of my essay and just got the reply now so I am thrilled! Here is the reply:


Dan, that sounds terrific - you could focus on a specific genre that uses social media. Social media itself isn't a genre they are social networks and distributed platforms, but they are doing exactly what you're saying impacting on traditional genres and methods of exhibition and distribution. You could clarify this in your essay and site examples of developing genres & programs that are developing through social media networks. For example 'The Matrix' and sci-fi genres were one of the first to use 'fan culture' and distribute aspects of their story across the internet. ARGs and Cross-media productions use social networks for both drama and documentary and have created hybrids such as ficto-documentaries or factual-dramas and reality games which blurr factual content with dramatic structures. You may have to search the website for conference papers and articles on this one and develop your essay through a key example of a program.

cheers, Cathie


So that has fired me up and I can hardly wait to get home and get these thoughts out of my head, so much to get down and done so that I can start to really focus on the final assignment, going to look at how mobile content is also affecting and develping genres.


ughh... the final assignement...I cant decide for the life of me what, who, when, how I will do it. I think I want to do the Imaginery World concept but havent got one single lucid original thought in my entire vapid brain at the moment... it's KILLING ME!

Blog Discussion| Factual Content: Conglomerates & Independents

The big difference I perceive between independent news and broadcast television is like the contrast between narrative and non-narrative storytelling. In true form narrative will have a cause and effect chain of events building to a conclusion, whereas non-narrative storytelling has no constraints, telling stories through scenes that can be completely unrelated but still make a point.

Broadcast news television is the narrative; a controlled series of events chosen to tell a particular story with a finite for or against opinion, whereas the independent can tell any story they feel the need to get out. Often the independent can tell the story the corporate, government, broadcaster don’t want the public to hear, see or experience.


In the same way, factual content can be manipulated by both parties but in broadcast television - in a news sense - they are bound by litigation to actually offer some ‘truth’ to the viewer, whereas an independent can offer his or her opinion about anything society has to offer. One is bound by chains and forced to give the viewer a construct of truth, the other is without boundary to tell it like it is, or however they chose to depict it. In this way the conventions of modern television have been blown wide apart, user generated content is paving the way for the future, society is demanding WYSWIG content when we want it over high speed broadband. This is forcing the networks to sit up and listen. A proliferation of reality TV has taken over and as discussed in the lecture has spawned such a wide range of hybrid genres where potentially anybody is a reporter and the lines between fact and fiction are blurred.


Social Media has also spawned its own phenomena – YouTube, Facebook & Myspace have online populations larger than small countries. What you want, when you want it content, opinion stripped of commercial intervention. Big corporates trying to get in on the act make fatal errors in judgement misrepresenting themselves with viral marketing campaigns that are struck down by the savvy new age community as fakes. A recent example was the Witchery ‘Naked’ campaign whereby an attractive woman claimed be trying to get in touch with a man by the jacket that he left without contact details after their first date.


This video was posted to YouTube and purported as a genuine website of an attractive woman, but was quickly exposed as a PR exercise and hence lost on the community quickly. At first Witchery denied the claim and then found unthought-of of legal implications for the hoax and had to fess up - it exposed a need for widespread awareness by these big companies meddling in new media. Just how should online viral content by executed? What really is factual content? As soon as the video was exposed as hoax traffic to it plummeted.


Social Media communities, user generated content and independent 'convergent journalists' are able to influence the public more with an original idea, an honest opinion, a real story just as easily and viral messages can spread like wildfire. There is real power in honest representation and integrity.


There is no doubt that this new era of Digital Video is going to effect broadcast television in many ways, and as technology increases and broadband reaches 100Mmps capacity becoming truly ‘two-way’, these changes are surely only the tip of the iceberg.


Digital content over broadband poses a very real serious threat to the corporate networks and I cant wait to see where it takes us.

Week 6 | Case Study - Current TV

Current TV houses so much content it becomes hard to define what the actual main purpose of the site is. I have been watching video after video and trying to determine exactly that for hours now and although it is entertaining and at times interesting I cant quite put my finger on what it achieves. Does it actually drive what content is going to be played in America?


I am not altogether sure, it doesn’t feel anything like Media Storm in that it has a much wider depth of content and a very busy structure that is not really that intuitive. I thought that by picking a genre from the submenu across the top banner, say Music, that I would find specific content just about music. What I did find was a bunch of disorganised content with no real lead to whether I would be watching video or listening to audio or reading static news. This was frustrating.


I also find American humour particularly annoying, I don’t get the one liner gags of David Letterman and when commercial mainstream spoof movies are released you wont find someone running further from the Cinema than me. I am mostly insulted by their commentary and stupid jokes. What is interesting about this drivel of content is the user generated stuff.


In a disorganised way if you are to find genuine original content in the site you will find that a whole gamut of different users are posting their thoughts on what they just watched. This acts in the genuine Web 2.0 way that this form of multimedia should. Users are able to say what they truly feel and it appears that just about anyone can contribute with Vlogs or Blogs, comments and just voting or using the numerous ways of tagging the content. Mostly it appears to be unmoderated, but how you could be really sure is beyond me after trawling through the site for the past few hours I am mostly just annoyed with it than interested.


I much prefer the serious side to MediaStorm where genuine artists are telling honest narratives that have meaning and try to put something positive out to the masses than the not-funny-slapstick content on this messy site. Thumbs Down from Dan.

Week 6 Case Study | Media Storm

What MediaStorm can offer over documentary time slots of television is industry recognition and exposure without requiring a huge budget or globally recognised CV to achieve it.


The submissions section of the site states 'We want to provide a vehicle for the most outstanding work. In short, if you have exceptional work that you feel we should see, we want to see it.' There is no boundary to communicate the type of story that the artist wants to portray.


This allows the user, like the students in this course, to be creative and not forced into a particular type of factual genre at all. The result here is a cross combination from the factual genres & hybrids as well as animation and multimedia projects. Media Storm coin their own best term; ‘diverse narratives that speak to the heart of the human condition’.


This site is an exemplary exhibition of outstanding hybrid factual content created by individuals striving to do something outside of the norm. Perhaps not all are particularly suitable for mainstream television. Not to say that they are not worthy, quite the opposite, but the monetary driven market that is corporate television these days may not be ready for the honesty and kinds of truths exposed by the independents creating these kinds of chilling narratives, animations, documentaries and short films.


As a launching pad for producers directors and animators alike this site has a whole lot to offer. MediaStorm offers new artists the opportunity to showcase their work in an unbiased way with the hope of creating the opportunity for further distribution.

Marked Assignment 2: Written Essay | Synopsis

For my written essay I will be looking at Superheroes as a genre. I am going to look at how Superheroes have been defined traditionally as a genre, and the affect advancements in digital video and technology has had on the genre.


I define the superhero genre as any film focusing on character/s who have supernatural power or abilities. Traditionally this could be said to have started with movies like the 1978 classic ‘Superman’ and TV series like ‘Batman and Robin’ and ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’. Nowadays producers are turning to Marvel Comics and producing one after another; creating blockbuster hits such as ‘The Xmen’, ‘Iron Man’ and most recently ‘Watchmen’.


One area I am focusing on is how ‘green screen’ technology has affected the development and progression of special effects in the superheroes genre.


Advancements in technology, exponential increases in computational power, and the availability of consumer special effects have made this accessible to everyone from novice to expert. I am going to research and analyse how green screen advancements have made the superhero genre more believable.


Has the genre been redefined? Is it more mainstream nowadays? Does it need to be born of comic book? What are the emerging trends? What are the attributes of successful use of the technology? Are audiences becoming desensitised and how does CGI play its part in the genre?

Assignment 1 | Digital Video Collage Project | What you see is not always what you get

The brief for this assignment was to create a video collage on theme ‘Two or three things about me’ using stock footage, images and sounds, photographs graphics and illustrations - and be creative with it.

I wrote in my brief that I would explore static imagery of me doing different things I have captured, plus video footage shot over the last five years exploring contrast and light and shade. I also stated I would create a soundtrack for the video with matching contrast with sweeping strings vs. a techno style musical score.

At first I was thinking I would use static shots up front to show imagery of myself, then cut to motion picture footage of motorbike riding through the mountains and then cut to imagery or grabs from videos of movies that have inspired me.

Once I started loading footage into a new project though, I hit a real creative block, I couldn’t get past loading footage and didn’t know where to begin any edits. So I grabbed a camera with the idea of trying to emulate the Kuleshov effect and filmed myself staring dead ahead, with no expression trying not to move. I then thought that maybe I could use this footage for some montage style editing and really hard fast obvious cuts. With that idea in mind I gathered different pieces of clothing together and marked a spot on the white wall in my kitchen and sat in front of it whilst shooting and changed clothes.

This resulted in having some different footage that made me think I could do a series of shots of me, video and stills, and in between the real hard fast montage cuts introducing the key elements of myself I was focusing on what I enjoy, riding my bike, one of my hobbies keeping tropical fish and what I do for work. In that sense I would have a complete picture of Dan, Fun, Hobby and Work interspersed with montage edits of things I have done over the years.

In a real breakthrough late one night it started to really take shape and I had a full 90 second video in no time that I could start to manipulate and really turn into something. I was so excited that the video was really starting to follow my brief, my storyboard, and what I had envisage from concept. It just took that small breakthrough and the story started to come to life. I threw in some template title slides that I found after completing the Lynda.com tutorials (I wanted to create my own but they looked terrible by comparison!) and all of a sudden I could see what was needed to complete the project.

I focused on the key areas in between the montage edits and found that I could tell the story easily, Fun/Entertainment/Hobby and Work a full quick snapshot look at my life including elements of other parts of my life in the montage edits. I believe the end result is a single-idea story that follows the brief and most importantly I am more than happy with.

Once I had exported a version of this take I decided that my Kuleshov effect missed the point so I went back to the notes and discovered that the discipline is quite strict and mine wasn’t working for an obvious reason. I used shots that weren’t of the discipline in scenery shots so it wasn’t working. I quickly found some stock photos in my library and recut the video with a food shot, a young girl, and a coffin and the difference is now obvious! The Kuleshov effect works… apart from one big difference, I clearly ignore the basic rule in the very last seconds after the coffin shot where I crack a big smile and laugh a little. This is my creative interpretation where I exhibit my own wry sense of humour through self-deprecation, nothing is all that serious and you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

In summary, I feel that I have met the brief, I have followed my original concept and I have learnt lots about creative direction plus I have thrown in something that I have learnt from the lectures and notes by including a recreation of the Kuleshov effect which really appealed to me as I read about it.

You can view my assignment on my YouTube page here: http://www.youtube.com/user/danblack72

NB: this is my 500 word blog report by not my final submitted video submission.
I am also including an optimised for iPod version here:

The countdown to deadline

Well I thought I should do some updates as things have progressed somewhat since I last posted.


My assignment has taken more form since I last blogged in panic mode. I now have at least a 60 second project in Premiere on the timeline.


I think it starts well and there is a soundtrack which I composed in Garage Band but it lacks some continuity. I think this stems from a lack of proper planning actually. Although it does follow my original thoughts in that I introduce a shot of where I live, some random bizarre cuts of me being silly and wearing different clothes then cuts to shots of riding my bike, shots of my fish tank which I love, and then cuts away to shots of me at work. But when I look at it I just see it as all random shots thrown together. I dont really see a story about me. I am hoping that when I finally get the audio voice over layed down over the top that maybe this will pull it all together.


I had a Premiere melt down earlier in that I was working with multiple sequences on the timeline as I wanted to do a PiP shot overlaying two different motorbike riding sequences together. I got this down and was happy with it then realised that the Lynda.com tutorials didnt actually cover off how to combine the sequences together once you had done your edits. I worked out after a while that you can copy and paste them back onto the one sequence but there has to be a better way to manage this!
Now I have also lost my 'snap to' settings when I am trying to align cuts together. This is causing some grief as the PiP pieces have lost their alignment. Back to the tutorials.


I am still suffering from camera phobia as well. I really dont like seeing myself on video! Wouldnt make a good actor me thinks out loud.


Have added some title slides in on a some of the cut sequences and think I may be over doing it but this is all part of the process I guess. Definitely going to try and do better pre production, storyboads and concept briefs before I get to this stage next time with major assignment.

What this weekend was meant to be, and what it was

Well, heck. It was supposed to be an absolute first cut and give me a total 60 second short film that I could then tease and post-produce. It was meant to be content. It was meant to be filming, it was meant to be productive, it was meant to have outcomes, there was supposed to be film on page, there was supposed to be audio, video, photography, output. What was there instead?
Well there was some filming at the very least, and I have captured I suppose quite a bit of stuff to tape and imported it into an Adobe project that is called Assignment 1, but there is no sense of achievement or feeling closer to the end of a project associated with those poor achievements. In fact I feel further away from my goal than I did when the weekend started.
I was supposed to get a news reel logo happening. I was supposed to design my intro. I was meant to do so many things and the weekend just slipped past me unexpectedly and all I have is a project with half a dozen imports sitting in it. In fact I cant even look at the imports to see if any of it makes sense. I feel sick looking at the imagery of myself. I dont like the way I look on camera which lead me to belive I am heading down the wrong track entirely. I was hoping to do a Kuleshov Effect with some shots of myself but I dont think I understand it completely and my efforts of sitting in front of the camer are a total miss.
Eegads, will I get this project done???
I think I have decided that I need to introduce myself, but can do this without being on camera with a VO. Then I could possibly just cut to my points of interest and talk about them via VO. No?
Will that work? Is it interesting and creative enough? I have so much doubt about it at the moment that the whole project seems blank and even though the deadline has been extended it seems to be approaching at a rate of knots that makes me feel increasingly nervous! Did this happen last year? Is it my own sense of paranoia about being on camera? Have I actually even seen myself on video before? Do i really want to? Shit!!!

Mid week 3 thoughts and aspirations

This week has been a challenge for me. I have had a hellish week at work lumped with the Chief of Staff role for our business unit. This means I will be handling financial and HR issues, liaising with Directors, GMDs and political giants who have the intellectual giantness of frightening proportions. I have to compile the weekly activity report which is sent directly to the CEO. The mere thought of it frightens the crap out of me. And here I sit time ticking on, trying to get through the case studies, blogs and tutes for this course!
Then there is the fact that I had three days away for my sisters 50th and a weekend away which dug into my study time drastically. Top that with a visit from my Adeliade dwelling sister who wants to 'hang out' and her daughtes arrival into Melbourne which makes me feel like I have a responsibility to show her the ropes so to speak.
Anyhoo... all this will pass and I will cope, glad I knocked off a heap of reading tonight including finally finishing this weeks lecture which I found I needed to read at least three times and I still cant recount from memory the differences between the very complex types of storytelling. Analysing the Blair Witch site was a really good excercise and I found it quite hard to decide what types of story telling it really was a combination of many of them, in fact possibly all of them!
I have made a concsious decision not to read anyone eles's comments on the course blog until I have formulated my own, this way I know that others opinions will not influence my own. That was hard! When I logged in I saw that 4 posts had already been logged and it was so tempting to read them to see if I was on the right track or not but I resisted so hopefully mine will stand up on its own as my own. I think this is important. In fact once I had posted my blog entry on Trigger Street I found that most other people disagreed with my comments. Maybe I am a bit naive, or pehaps it is a good reflection to be really reflective, really think deeply about the question and not rush a thing. There were many other things about the site that other students had reflected on that I had not even considered! I really am an early adopter!
So last night as I was trying, trying, trying to get to sleep my mind wandered as it does to the upcoming assignment. Video collage. I have already submitted my concept brief and storyboard when at midnight I came up with an entirely new concept that I really want to run with. I emailed Cathie to see if that was ok and await her answer.
As usual I find that as I progress through the materials, more ideas materialise and I change my mind. In fact I was just reading Part 2 Pre Production Processes and discovered that this indeed is the role that I am playing, a creative producer/developer/designer/editor! So it should be fine that I have refined my idea and I know it is good, now I just have to excecute!
So this weekend is my post production time, I have already got a heap of footage that I like and I know that if I pour through my photo library I will find plenty of still photography, stuff that I have in mind, that will suit the project, but there still is the stuff that I know I need and havent got yet - to tape. Fortunately I have lined up a fairly decent Mini DV camcorder with a good mic that will do the job. Now all I have to do is overcome seeing myself on tape and this could be a great little piece!
Looking forward to it right now, but I know the terror will set in once I start rolling tape! EEEEK!

Week 3 | Activity 2 | Trigger Street

I see Triggerstreet as a start-up for budding enthusiasts of storytelling. As the site itself proclaims – Help others, help yourself. An unbiased place to load your script to get feedback on your writing skills or a launching pad to a new career in film making. The site is logical, easy to sign up for and provides hours of reading and insight into the industry which is largely about film making. An enticing Web 2.0 social media experience, people are invited to load stories, movies, enter competitions, post real time comments on blogs, load photo’s and share ideas with each other.
Having never known this site existed I can see many uses for it especially as a budding film maker.
No longer do I have to sit staring at a blank page with writers block! I could upload my outlines and ideas to the site for instant feedback.
I could request a script for use in my own film, or best yet in my mind, hone my own skills by requesting to review others works. It offers script writers loads of interesting industry news and podcasts, comics, plays short stories and books, in short this site is must have subscription for any film maker or person looking for aspiration and inspiration!

Week 3 | Activity 1 | The Blair Witch

The Blair Witch as a story utilised many forms of the identified story telling techniques in Lecture 2. In essence it is a cross media story the producers used a website with an ARG style to heighten awareness of the film, create hyperbole and interest in the movie itself which could be described as having an interactive threaded plot, or non linear structure. Once released it was a box office success and then came the DVD and assorted paraphernalia along with it.
At it’s height it is probably best described as Multimedia storytelling, which is what fascinates me most. It shows us how to exploit maximum exposure to the widest audience possible through the use of all of the available mediums in digital video. The use of the nonlinear format whereby the audience is enticed to decide what is real and what is fiction with websites, animations, creepy audio soundtracks and of course the now infamous hand held camera shots of one of the young female students filming herself at night, only showing her terrified eyes as she pants and cries and tells us how terrified she is, a classic in-story example of convergent journalism. The makers have every angle covered!


The use of the website to pull the audience in and want to know what happens is a very clever use of multimedia storytelling itself and holds well even today as a method of advertising, offering the film for sale at a very low price.

These techniques are now common amongst film makers but I don’t believe it has been done as well as the Blair Witch Project since.

Notes on Premiere Pro shortcuts

I have now finished the Premiere Pro Workshop in its entirety. Once I started it was hard to stop myself doing the whole lot cause there are obviously great tips and tricks inside the workshops.

Anyhoo, just a quick capture of some shortcuts - some I have used before, others are ones I know I will use now!

I key - set in point

O key - set out point

J key - backwards on timeline

K key - pause on timeline

L - forwards on timeline

Pressing J or L and holding will speed up the action respectively.

* key on a numbered keyboard (not above 8 key) will add un-numbered markers, very useful for beat markers in and out points on audio tracks

CMD key while dropping clips in the timeline will perform insert edit

CMD while lifting clips inserts and cuts while shifting other clips in time

CMD + Option shifts clips in target tracks

Holding CMD and dragging clip performs a ripple edit when trimming

Slip Tool - two rolling edits simultaneously

Slide Tool - changes in and out duration points while keeping duration.

Using Snap-To, press and Hold Shift while dragging clips on the timeline to Snap-To

Note to self after transcribing those notes from my notepad, may need to revisit Volume 8 Editing in the Timeline to really understand and get the hand of those tools and tips.

:0)

Week 2 | Update

Wow it has been a big weekend of learning for me! I thought that it would be timely to do this update thang each Sunday night when I finish assignments, upload things to DDB or Blackboard so I can track my progress. Well I have uploaded my Draft Concept Brief and Storyboard to DDB this afternoon and made significant progress today/tonight so here is my sanity check. :P)

Lecture 1 WAS A MONSTER. I don't know how other students found it but the volume of information that was in that 61 page PDF was STAGGERING! Interesting but overwhelming is another way of saying that, actually it was more than interesting, it was amazing. I am one of those people (early adopter) that must have every new gadget as soon as it becomes available, I usually have Google alerts set up for anything new and interesting in technology way before most people and become well conversant way before the products hit the market. That may seem irrelevant but in terms of digital media an being asked to think about it in a historical context I was quite flabbergasted by what I didn't know. I had no idea that it went back so far in time! So for me this whole weekend was just a complete trip. The 45 degree weather on Saturday helped in that it was better hiding indoors than out.

But seriously, that was a monster lecture, it took me two full days and I reckon 14hrs plus to get through before I provided some feedback to Cathie about the volume of content and she advised that I was able to be more selective about my areas of interest. Regardless of that I regret nothing because I know now more than I ever did about the history of film and digital media. Watching all of the YouTube videos (YES I WATCHED THEM ALL!) was an incredible journey. Totally fascinating. Just getting through that lecture however so that I could post my thoughts to this blog was a arduous task only in that it really took my time and full concentration.

But then on top of that was all the module readings, which I am yet to gain access to on Books 24x7, plus the actual course outline, the workshops, setting up the blog, posting thoughts to Lecture 1 on my blog, using the BlackBoard to discuss stuff (even just in the welcome forum) and Module outlines themselves... it already seemed to much even though I was enjoying it and I had barely started gathering my thoughts on the Concept Brief and Storyboard for assignment one yet, when I found all of the Lynda.com tutorials (BTW what a stupid name for a online learning system??).

And so it is about 10:30pm on Sunday night and I have been at it since 10am this morning which makes for a full 12hr day of learning about Digital Video and I must say my enthusiasm has not waned one iota. I am more pumped full of ideas and creative information now than I have ever been. If only 3D modelling and Animation last year had some tutes on Lynda.com for modelling! God that would have been good.

So these tutes on Premiere CS4.. I opened with hesitation after having a minor log in problem only allowing access to the first 3 modules, I thought.. meh.. .yeah whatever... I know how to use the interface, I know the basics, dont waste too much time. But such is the curse of the early adopter who thinks he knows everything, was I about to be taught a lesson.

It is the intricacies and finer points of being able to use those buttons that up until now I had just thought were fancy show pony buttons I didn't need. Boy was I wrong. The tutes are fantastic! A must see. Especially the tips about using the Program VS Source window. Up until now I had always just imported my clips straight into Bins in the Project window, and then edited on the timeline. I used ins and outs, I cut chopped, ripple edited and locked audio to cut video and vice versa, but never had I bothered with the Program window! What a waste of time I thought! Now I see the error of my ways. Capturing clips to you project window is the basic, but now I see how you can do most of your pre-production in the program window, batch bunches of clips from the same source to the timeline and change one without the other, log ins and outs that can be drag and dropped on the timeline, inserts and overlays.. OMG so many things that I didn't know!

These dribbled late night random unfocused over tired thoughts are probably not very cohesive but to me in short mean a new world of digital editing. The exact reason I wanted to put the theory to the 'madness' of what I thought I knew has all of a sudden in one short day become completely validated. I feel so happy to know that after years of doing sub par courses at other unnamed places of education that this has been worth my persistence. I am finally learning everything and more than I ever wanted to know.

I often find that after reading more and learning from hands on experience that I would have gone back and done things differently. As with today's submission to the DDB, I now have tonnes of ideas about my collage project collecting in my mind about how I will complete that assignment. I want to rewrite and resubmit my concepts but understand that this is the process of learning, no need to really, just refocus and make it a work of progress, learn as I go, do by doing, and make it the best I possibly can. I am so excited I can virtually hear Hollywood knocking my doors down!

Yours sincerely, the mentally fatigued, Surrealist film maker to be... aka Dan Black.

Week 2: Blog Discussion: What is Digital Video?

A direct question such as this deserves a direct answer so I am going to try and do just that in a short succinct sentence.

Digital Video is a freeform visual medium that allows artists of every kind to express their views without restriction on their interpretation and vision and ideas of how they see the world, dreams, ideas, thoughts, musicality, hopes and aspirations.

That probably doesn't do the last 100 years of pioneer film makers justice but it sums up well how I feel about digital video.

The lecture itself was such a journey and amazing learning experience for me and opened my eyes wide to not only the history of film making but just how adventurous and creative those before us have already been. To think that in the 1940's people were doing these amazing animations and creating film techniques that will be used for so many centuries after they have come and gone is just gob smacking.

What would Mary Ellen Bute or Len Lye do with Flash I wonder?!

Digital Video in the current age for me means the culmination of everything I have ever found intriguing blended into endless possibility. I can animate, draw, photograph, create anything I want into a visual format and share it with the world in an instant.

So many technological advances have occured in the last 20 years in personal computing and home recording that now almost anyone has the ability to say 'I create Digital Video'. Handheld PDAs, mobile phones and of course the personal handheld video camera have become 'standard' and accessible by so many that everyone can have a flitter with the medium and become published from the home office, just as I can now.

CGI has played an enormous role in the evolution of digital video and as computational power increases exponentially we are seeing changes in the commercial Hollywood film industry that would have never been possible 5 years ago. Special FX people can create illusions of particles, wind, smoke, fire etc so real that Producers can no longer tell the difference. Examples of films that have 'wowed' me in recent times because of such advancements in technology have been the Harry Potter series, Transformers, M Nights Shyamalan's movies, David Lynch (my all time favourite surrealist film "The Lost Highway"), and of course, Finding Nemo as well as so many others.

Digital Video is a fascinating medium and I believe we are in an age where massive advancements will only lead to more incredible experiences and breakthroughs in film making and I for one, want to be part of it!

Digital Video Lecture 1 - "The First Films'

Watching the 'First Films' playlist on YouTube itself was the first reminder I had of how much technology has changed. I sit in my office wired to a high powered multimedia personal computer on high speed broadband while the Lumiere brothers had a single film camera that was capable of very little and what do they record? Images of people walking out of a factory, images of a train arriving. No plot, no story and no sound. But in the day legend has it that on premiere of 'Arrival of a Train' that people fled the cinema fearing being struck down by a train.

I have no real critique of the films as there is naught to critique apart from what I have noted above. It is more interesting from a technological view as well as a socio-political perpective. The camera used, the type of film, the lack of audio all very incredible nonetheless when you consider this is over 100 years ago today, I didnt actually realise that we had film that long ago! But why did the brothers film what they did? Look at the subjects in the film, few of whom you can actually see the trepidation in their faces as they stare down the barrel of the camera as if it were about to steal their soul.

Fast forward 80 odd years to the premiers of William Friedkins 'The Excorcist' 1973 and the audience members were so mentally disturbed and frightened by what was happening on screen that the fled screaming and vomiting from cinemas. Why did William chose to shoot such a terrifying yet imaginery movie about demonic possession? It is beyond comprehension but Oscar winning nonetheless.

The 'First Films' playlist is like every first persons film I imagine, and attest too, no real idea why we are about to record what we are recording, rather just an experiment with technology that we dont really understand but must explore and strive to master. I often shoot random images and things without any real understanding of what I am shooting or why until I import the footage into an editing program and start playing with what I see on screen.

That in itself will be my biggest challenge this trimester, planning, drafting, scoping, briefing concepts etc are all very foreign to my understanding of creating film.

Getting started

I have spent the day organising my office, purging all of last trimesters stuff into folders and bookcases and clearing out loads of junk that has built up over the holidays.

I found that quite a lot of information was distributed very quickly this tri, making me feel a bit anxious to get started asap. I have downloaded all the Module Summaries, Production resources and reading and templates and organised a new scratch disk for everything I create this tri in a suitable place for storing files.

I should state right up front that I am a Mac user, and I dont think I have notified a software house at the UoN as yet that I will need Mac Software, I am hoping it will be Adobe's Master Collection CS4 as I have read a few books on After Effects and Premiere Pro (in albeit CS3) and feel that would be a big advantage early on. Last year having never touched 3D software ever, I went a bit introverted, manic and prolly pretty dam weird for a few months while getting the hang of it!

I am just going to list where I am at with Module 0 and aim to do this regularly to time-stamp my progress.

READ:

• Course Outline PDF √
  
• Digital Video Files PDF √
  
• Digital Video Terminology PDF √
  
• Introdution to Premier Pro PDF √
  

SOURCE:

• Stock footage, photos and sounds for Assignement 1. √ (still need more footage and pics)

WRITE:

• Concept Brief
  
• Draft Storyboard

Neither of the last two have any ink on paper yet, I have some ideas about using the footage I captured on the m/bike to do some high speed intro and I like the idea of some space footage fromt the stock libraries, plus a few pics I have of me as overlays but I am not clued in yet as to how I will pull it together for a 120 second collage of 'two or three things about me'. Right now I want to tell the story visually with heavy metal music as the soundtrack but dont think it quite tells the story.

I think I have my first case of writers block, but in this case it is Video Directors block. I am not used to working this way with video, I usually get footage, or take footage, and then throw it together in the timeline, cut and trimming and reordering as I go to tell the story that I already know. This is different in that I have to think of the story but have been provided a theme, then create a concept brief and storyboard before I even open software.

Got my whiteboard up and running and am pretty happy with the office space, so just pull your head in Dan and get cracking!

:)